agree to disappear

on showing up curious to a blood sport

It’s an election year.
Cue the circus music.
Bring in the dancing monkeys.

I hate election years. Loathe them. Not because I don’t care about political issues, but because the pundits that continually put themselves forth to run the country are becoming less and less appealing. And what I believe is worse is what happens amongst the American people during an election year. I already know this is a polarized time—becoming more polarized every day—but nothing is more shocking to see just how polarized people have become. With the advent of social media, we now have the privilege and audacity to simply speak into echo chambers rather than at round tables.

Where did the round table discussions go?
Where did people stop leaning in and listening?
When did the Aristotelian conversation die?

your stick is wrong

Recently I was at a public park with Sam when he began engaging in play with another child. They both had sticks and Sam, true to form, immediately announced that his was a light saber. The other child was quick to disagree, “No, it’s a fishing pole.” Sam assured this child it was in fact a light saber, swooshing it around in the air, attempting to engage the other child in play. This child, too, stood their ground.

It’s a fishing pole!
It’s a light saber!
No, it’s a FISHING POLE!
MINE IS A LIGHT SABER!

I usually try to give him space to work out his own problems, but things were heating up quickly and both the other mother and myself were beginning to see the need for parental guidance. However, while we were both attempting to triangulate peace, I found our parenting strategies to be uncomfortably at odds. I first stepped in and said, “Hey guys, maybe they can be both! Sam, to them it’s a fishing pole, but to you it’s a light saber. I think you guys are just imagining different things, and that’s ok. Both are true. A stick can be so many cool things!” But the other mother quickly looked at her child and said “Agree to disagree!”

Her child glanced at Sam and stated, again, that theirs was a fishing pole and Sam looked at me confused. I could tell he wanted to stand his ground, but he also liked the idea that his could be a light saber while theirs could be a fishing pole—and that maybe later, his stick could also be a fishing pole. When I suggested again that maybe they were playing different games and that a stick could be both things, the other mother again quickly (and more forcefully) interjected with “AGREE TO DISAGREE!”

We were at an impasse.
I absolutely agree that we will, many times in our life, need to agree to disagree with one another in order to keep the peace, but was this really one of those times? Sure, agree that one child wants the stick to be one thing and the other child another, but wasn’t this also an opportunity to expand communication and imagination and say “But what if the stick is both? What if we are actually saying the same thing?”

What if?

my take-charge, full-throttle, rollercoaster, curious boy

religion and politics

More impartiality met me a couple of weeks later when a friend and I were briefly mentioning who was running for president and how things were starting to feel like a spooky rerun of 2020. I threw in that I was thankful for an interesting third option in Robert F. Kennedy Jr. mainly just to shake things up a bit and not have to hear the same old stories from the same old men all over again. This friend apparently saw this as an opportunity to ask if I had seen RFK’s stance on abortion, to which I said I had.

The conversation was over before it began and I, innocent little dumb dumb that I am, didn’t see it coming.

My friend immediately stated that he found RFK’s stance completely morally wrong and could in no way vote for someone who didn’t fully and completely believe that all abortion was murder and should be treated as such. I felt for him—I remembered not too long ago feeling and thinking the same way. But then I listened to women’s stories—their impossible, heartbreaking stories—and how many ways “abortion” is labeled in the medical community. I also became a foster parent and was surrounded by people (from both sides of the aisle) who were quick to pat David and I on the back for our “selfless and honorable sacrifice” while shaking their head’s at Sam’s biological mother. If only these folks had the whole story—they wouldn’t be congratulating or condemning either of us.

But back to my friend’s argument.

While I understood where he was coming from, I attempted to show him a different side. Not a side that was a complete opposite of his position, but one that said there might be more to this than either of us can see. Maybe this side of eternity there couldn’t be a perfectly moral answer that was short and sweet without someone being hurt. Maybe there were deeper issues that caused this issue to exist. Maybe there was information that he didn’t have.

But he wasn’t budging.
He had stopped making eye contact with me and the tension in his jaw could crush marbles. We weren’t getting anywhere and I knew the best and most gracious thing at this point was to agree to disagree, as much as it pained me to do it.

I told my friend that I understood and respected his position—even agreed with parts of it in theory, but I just looked at things differently these days, which I thought was ok. He was livid from not winning an argument that I was hoping was a discussion, at which point I excused myself and joined a different conversation. It was frustrating—not because I wanted to “win” or that I thought he was wrong, but that I had tried to sympathize with his point of view and I did not receive the same sympathy or curiosity in return. Either it was murder or it wasn’t. Either it’s black or it’s white. Either I was wrong or I was wrong. And apparently, I was wrong, because I was never given an ear of curiosity.

God created the world and made it in vivid color. There are things that are right and are wrong. I can’t disagree that abortion is a tragedy, but I also think mandating pregnant women to have an ultrasound when they are in to receive an abortion is incredibly problematic. What of the women whose insurance paperwork reads “preterm abortion” from an ectopic pregnancy and retrieval? What of the woman with no family or support system who is fleeing an abusive relationship living in abject poverty?

I submit to the jury that there is no easy answer. There are moral answers, there are answers that in a right, good, and perfectly just world are crystal clear, but in a right, good, and perfectly just world, I also submit that these hot button topics wouldn’t even exist.

curiosity, 2024

Once a month I sit on squashy couches with a group of women for a cup of tea and the hopes of discussing a book we have all mostly read. This is a group of Christian women, but our book choices are not limited to Christian fiction and non-fiction. It has been a pleasure to read and discuss a wide berth of fiction, nonfiction, memoir, and beyond.

Our latest read was The Lost Queen by Signe Pike, which set its characters in Arthurian Briton, as the emergence of Christianity caused waves amongst keepers of Druidism, or the “Old Way”. Christians are by no means the “good guys” in this story, and we all found ourselves sympathizing with a pagan community that we wouldn’t align with now. However, we all also agreed that there were aspects of Druidism that were beautiful, even God-breathed; things that could have been uniting to the two religions had Christianity not come in, guns blazing, ready to burn everything that was sacred to the Britons to the ground.

We all felt the tension of being 21st century Christian women grappling with the sin and pride of Christians who lived hundreds of years before us. We still feel and see the same polarization of these thoughts today. But one friend in the group leaned forward and said something I don’t think I’ll ever forget:

You know, had Christians just come into this culture and been curious, I think it would have changed the entire relationship they had with the Britons. If they had tried to see things they had in common with pagans and used those moments to unify the conversation, can you imagine how peaceful these people could have been?

It was so simple, but it was true.
Curiosity as humility. What if?
And what if Paul had already given us a solid example of this same curious humility when he spoke to the people at Mars Hill?

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[a] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ Acts 17: 24-28

Maybe it’s not that we disagree, but rather that we actually agree with one another, but we’re so quick to only explain our point of view, that we can’t see that we’re fighting on the same team.

Or maybe we’ve been fighting for so long, that we actually have come to enjoy the taste of each other’s blood.

Lord, have mercy on us.

Always,
Emily


P.S. Please don’t come for me in the comments about abortion, RFK, parenting choices, or reading fiction about pagan cultures. Chill. I have no agenda other than asking all of us to just consider being a tad more curious. Myself included.